LATAH COUNTY

Under Construction

The FOREKNOWLEDGE of God

Particular Baptist's Valuable Contribution

to Reformed Covenant Theology

The New Covenant: Conditional or Unconditional - Salvific or Non-Salvific

Saving Faith

The IMPUTED Rightousness of Christ

The grace of faith, by which the elect are enabled to believe so that their souls are saved, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts....But the principal acts of saving faith focus directly on Christ—accepting, receiving, and resting upon him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the New Covenant

1. Those whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifies, 1 not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; 2 not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; 3 not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing Christ's active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith, 4 which faith they have not of themselves; it is the gift of God. 5

1. Romans 3:24, 8:30 2. Romans 4:5-8, Ephesians 1:7 3. 1 Corinthians 1:30-31, Romans 5:17-19 4. Philippians 3:8-9; Ephesians 2:8-10 5. John 1:12, Romans 5:17

What “Faith without Works is Dead” Actually Means

The main difficulty is some teach an unbiblical view of the covenants that is not in line with the historic Reformed position. They blur the lines between the visible church (all those who are members of an earthly church) and the invisible church (all those who are truly united to Christ through faith and thus members of the church from Heaven’s perspective), by teaching that all who are baptized are objectively in the covenant of grace and united to Christ. In their system, there are two types of elect people. There are those who have a decretal election (chosen from eternity by God’s unchanging decree) and those who have only a covenantal election (chosen by God to belong temporarily to the covenant community). The decretally elect will never fall away, but the covenantally elect can and do fall away. What ensures that a person is decretally elect? Not faith, but faithfulness. In other words, all members of the church are truly in the covenant objectively, but they must do something to continue in it. If they do not continue in faithfulness, they will fall from grace. Worship in this context is no longer a gathering in which God’s people, by faith, receive from God through the means of grace (word and sacraments), but more of a synergistic event where God renews His covenant with those who remain faithful to it. This “covenant renewal” is formalized by weekly communion. This sounds a lot like Roman Catholicism, which teaches that a person is in by baptism and must continue by obedience and participation in the Eucharist (communion) at Mass. This is why, in the Roman Catholic system, a person must repeatedly receive the sacrifice of Christ. In fact, Peter Leithart (a current minister in the CREC and one of the original signers of the Federal Vision) has publicly called for more unity within the larger church, including with Roman Catholicism.

Moscow Reformed Baptist Church Plant